Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, addressed the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), imagining how technology can empower an open, collaborative and flexible working culture. Video of his full lecture is here, but the short animated excerpt above is even more fun.

“How might we think with and through an object like Hello Kitty? What kinds of structures of feeling does Hello Kitty enable? What does Hello Kitty, in effect, do in the private worlds of her fans, as well as in the larger public world of global goods?”

Philosopher and author Roman Krznaric recently addressed the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), explaining how we can help drive social change by stepping outside ourselves. Video of his full lecture is here, but the short animated excerpt above is even more fun.

Paul Ryan is today’s leading Republican intellectual because he’s read 4 books. Well 3, actually, but he read Atlas Shrugged twice.. Alec MacGillis has a thorough examination of this in The New Republic:

“It wasn’t clear at first that he even wanted to be in D.C. Offered a position on Senator Bob Kasten’s committee right after college, Ryan took awhile to respond because he was trying to find work as a ski instructor in Colorado instead.”

“Ryan was inquisitive during his early days on the Hill, but in a way that was hard to distinguish from mere favor-currying. (He had been named the ‘biggest brown noser’ of his high school class.) He nagged [Cesar] Conda … so often with questions about supply-side economics that Conda lent him two books to keep him busy—Jude Wanniski’s The Way the World Worksand George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty, both foundational tracts for trickle-down Reaganomics.”

Former Alaska Temp-Governor Sarah Palin recently addressed a dinner meeting of India’s top thinkers and celebrities at the India Today Conclave. India Today Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie respectfully introduced Mrs. Palin as “the sexiest brand in Republican politics.” Intellectuals in the audience were delighted with her presentation, “My Vision of America,” as it was an object lesson in why India is overtaking the U.S.A. as a world power. Bollywood entertainment executives were likewise entranced, since political stand-up comedy is nowhere near that outrageous in South Asia.